Football fans crushed in stadium stampede

Author

Website Name

Year Published

Title

URL

Access Date

March 31, 2015

Publisher

A+E Networks

On this day in 1971, 66 football (soccer) fans are killed in a stampede at a stadium in Glasgow, Scotland, as they attempt to leave a game after a late goal by the home team. Initial reports suggested that the disaster was caused by fans returning to their seats after hearing of the last goal, but in fact it was simply the crush of spectators all leaving at the same time on the same stairway that led to tragedy. This was not the first time that disaster had struck the stadium.

Ibrox Stadium was built on the south side of Glasgow in 1900 and suffered its first serious incident only two years later. Just minutes into a match between England and Scotland on April 5, 1902, the weight of the fans on the stadium’s wooden west terrace caused a partial collapse of the structure. Dozens of spectators fell 45 feet to the ground. To make matters worse, the collapse caused a general panic and hundreds of people were injured in the subsequent rush to the exits.

In September 1961, a crush of fans on stairway 13 killed two people and injured scores of others. This same stairway was the site of eight serious injuries at a match in September 1967 and 24 more injuries in January 1969. Still, no design or safety changes had been made to the stairway by the time the Rangers played a home match against Celtic on January 2, 1971, in front of 80,000 fans.

The game was a scoreless tie until Celtic took the lead with minutes left. However, Ranger Colin Stein scored the equalizer with just seconds remaining and the excited home crowd exited quickly on the cold, misty afternoon. At the top of stairway 13, a few metal railings bent and collapsed with the weight of the crowd, and people began to fall forward down the stairs. Sixty-six people–65 men and one woman, 18-year-old Margaret Ferguson–were suffocated and crushed to death in the resulting chaos. Another 145 were seriously injured.

This was the worst soccer disaster in Scottish history and the worst ever in the United Kingdom until 96 people died in Hillsborough in 1989.

Also on this day

On this day in 1980, in a strong reaction to the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter asks the Senate to postpone action on the SALT II nuclear weapons treaty and recalls the U.S. ambassador to Moscow. These actions sent a message that the age of detente...

The Continental Congress publishes the “Tory Act” resolution on this day in 1776, which describes how colonies should handle those Americans who remain loyal to the British and King George.
The act called on colonial committees to indoctrinate those “honest and well-meaning, but uninformed people” by enlightening them...

On this day in 2009, media outlets report that a rare unrestored 1937 Bugatti Type 57S Atalante Coupe has been found in the garage of a British doctor. A month later, on February 7, the car sold at a Paris auction for some $4.4 million.
The black two-seater, one of just...

On this day in 1863, the Battle of Stones River concludes when the Union troops of William Rosecrans defeat Confederates under Braxton Bragg at Murfeesboro, Tennessee, just south of Nashville. The battle was a crucial engagement in the contest for central Tennessee, and provided a Union victory during a bleak...

In a very strong reaction to the December 1979 Soviet military intervention into Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter requests that the Senate postpone action on the SALT-II nuclear weapons treaty and recalls the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union. These actions indicated that the U.S.-Soviet relationship had been severely damaged...

The so-called Yorkshire Ripper is finally caught by British police, ending one of the largest manhunts in history. For five years, investigators had pursued every lead in an effort to stop the serial killer who terrorized Northern England, but the end came out of pure happenstance. Peter Sutcliffe was spotted...

The kingdom of Granada falls to the Christian forces of King Ferdinand V and Queen Isabella I, and the Moors lose their last foothold in Spain.Located at the confluence of the Darro and Genil rivers in southern Spain, the city of Granada was a Moorish fortress that rose to prominence...

Georgia votes to ratify the U.S. Constitution, becoming the fourth state in the modern United States. Named after King George II, Georgia was first settled by Europeans in 1733, when a group of British debtors led by English philanthropist James E. Oglethorpe traveled up the Savannah River and established Georgia’s...

Senator Timothy Pickering, a Federalist from Massachusetts, becomes the first senator to be censured when the Senate approves a censure motion against him by a vote of 20 to seven. Pickering was accused of violating congressional law by publicly revealing secret documents communicated by the president to the Senate.During the...

During the Russo-Japanese War, Port Arthur, the Russian naval base in China, falls to Japanese naval forces under Admiral Heihachiro Togo. It was the first in a series of defeats that by June turned the tide of the imperial conflict irrevocably against Russia.In February 1904, following a Russian rejection of...

On January 2, 1958, celebrated soprano Maria Callas walks off after the first act of a gala performance of Bellini’s Norma in Rome, claiming illness. The president of Italy and most of Rome’s high society were in the audience, and Callas, known for her volatile temperament, was sharply criticized. It...

“Former Model Named Head of Fox Productions” ran the headline in the January 2, 1980, issue of the New York Times, over an article announcing that Sherry Lansing had been selected to lead the production department at 20th Century Fox. After signing a three-year contract at a minimum of $300,000...

On this day in 1897, American writer Stephen Crane survives the sinking of The Commodore off the coast of Florida. He will turn the harrowing adventure into his classic short story “The Open Boat” (1897).
The 25-year-old writer had gained international fame with the publication of his novel The Red Badge...

The Weavers, one of the most significant popular-music groups of the postwar era, saw their career nearly destroyed during the Red Scare of the early 1950s. Even with anti-communist fervor in decline by the early 1960s, the Weavers' leftist politics were used against them as late as January 2, 1962,...

Albert Fall, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior, resigns in response to public outrage over the Teapot Dome scandal. Fall’s resignation illuminated a deeply corrupt relationship between western developers and the federal government.
Born in Kentucky in 1861, Albert Fall moved to New Mexico in 1887 because doctors told...

President Benjamin Harrison welcomes Alice Sanger as the first female White House staffer on this day in 1890.
During an otherwise uneventful presidency remarkable only for allowing Congress a free-for-all in spending public funds, Alice Sanger’s appointment may have been an olive branch to the growing women’s suffrage movement that had...

On this day in 1974, President Richard M. Nixon signs the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act, setting a new national maximum speed limit. Prior to 1974, individual states set speed limits within their boundaries and highway speed limits across the country ranged from 40 mph to 80 mph. The U.S....

On January 2, 1956, Oklahoma University’s champion football team, the Sooners, defeat Maryland 20-6 in the Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida, winning the national championship and scoring their 30th straight victory in the middle of a winning streak that went on to stretch to 47 games.
Behind Coach Bud Wilkinson, the...

At Ap Bac, a village in the Mekong Delta 50 miles southwest of Saigon, the Viet Cong inflict heavy casualties on a much larger South Vietnamese force.
About 2,500 troops of South Vietnam’s 7th Infantry Division–equipped with automatic weapons, armored amphibious personnel carriers, and supported by bombers and helicopters–failed to ...

In what is described as the biggest air battle of the war to date, U.S. Air Force F-4 Phantom jets down seven communist MiG-21s over North Vietnam. The Phantoms were flying cover for F-105 Thunderchief fighter-bombers, which were attacking surface-to-air missile sites in the Red River Delta. During...

In a crucial turning point of the Russo-Japanese War, Japan captures Port Arthur, a major Russian naval base on the Liaodong Peninsula in China, on this day in 1905. When Czar Nicholas II’s Russia declined to withdraw its troops from Manchuria after joining with British, French, Japanese, German...

On this day, the Navy Airship Patrol Group 1 and Air Ship Squadron 12 are established at Lakehurst, N.J. The U.S. Navy was the only military service in the world to use airships–also known as blimps–during the war.
The U.S. Navy was actually behind the times in the use of blimps;...